“Shore he does, and more. I come from Uvalde, where it’s plumb wild. I was raised on squirrel and corn pone, and all the learning I got was out the little old blue-back speller. But my pap done told me that since Texas taken most of the earth away from Mayheeco, Uncle Sam, he’s had about six government surveys made a-trying and a-trying to find whereat is the one hundredth meridian, and likewise how far north is 36-30, so’s they can tell where Texas stops at. They can’t not one of them people agree even with hisself where either of them places is at. Them surveyors don’t know no more’n that claybank steer. Trail? There ain’t no trail. We’re lost from the first jump, unless’n that steer knows. There wasn’t never no Chisholm Trail nowheres, and I can whip any man says there was. I didn’t read of no such thing in the blue-back speller. But I allow, give me a good North Star and a dun steer, I kin find Aberlene ef there is ary such place.”
“Oh, we’ll find a trail,” replied the younger man. “I’m telling you, there is a trace called the Chisholm Trail north of the Red River. You can get to Baxter Springs that way, or to Little Rock, and I reckon to Wichita; and Aberlene’s north of Wichita somewheres. There’s grass and water all the way through.”
“All trails is alike to a cow man,” assented Nabours. “My pap said all trails was begun by horse thiefs. My pap come west into Texas from Louisianny. He come over the Trammel Trace, from the prairies west. Injuns made that, but it didn’t get nowheres. Injuns, horse thiefs, whisky peddlers—I reckon that’s about how the cow trails started. What they call the Chisholm Trail runs up to the Arbuckle Mountains. That’s where we’ll hit the reservation Indians. They’ll all want beef—and whisky.
“There’s a road up from Santone to San Marcos and Austin, so I reckon we’ll head up Plum Creek and strike in north over Cedar and Onion. Ef there is a trail we’ll find it. Ef there ain’t we’ll make one. Foller that dun steer—he knows where Aberlene is at.”
Wheeling and riding far at one side of the scattered herd, the foreman rode to the rear, where the cows and calves were straggling on. His drag on that side met him—Sid Collins, flap-hatted, tobacco-stained.